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Education News
North
Carolina Education News
June 2008
Copyright © 2008 Queue, Inc.
IN
THIS ISSUE:
Program For High School Students
Public Schools As Good As Private Schools in Raising
Math Scores, Study Says
Parental Involvement Strongly Impacts
Student Achievement
A diverse group of North Carolina high school students initiated 30 new community service projects during the first University of North Carolina Wilmington Need 2 Lead (N2L) weekend, May 15-18. The innovative new program focused on equipping 30 sophomore leaders with the tools needed to design and implement their own dream service projects in their home communities.
UNC
Wilmington faculty, staff and local community members engaged students in
workshops focused on public speaking, team work, fundraising and other topics
related to effective leadership. Students participated in hands-on activities
like team-building intensive rope courses, an identity-mapping session and
networking opportunities with businesses including GE, BB&T, Seaside
Mortgage Corporation, Verizon Wireless and General Electric Hitachi.
James
McEachin, a student from Northern Nash High School, summed up the community-oriented
attitude that the participants displayed throughout the weekend.
"Our
communities are our responsibility," he said. "Since we are all from
different parts of North Carolina, each of our projects will make the state as
a whole a better place. If nobody else steps up, who will?"
The
students are working on projects ranging from a Spanish language video and
pamphlet on diabetes for the Hispanic community to an educational Heritage
Program for African American males. They will implement the projects themselves
but will receive ongoing help from their UNC Wilmington student mentors, who
worked with them in small groups during the N2L weekend experience. The mentors
will provide the students with distance coaching during the 2008-09 school year
as service projects are actualized. In spring 2009, students will return to
UNCW for a leadership symposium to showcase their completed service projects.
Keryn
Vickers, UNC Wilmington Admissions assistant director and N2L program director,
stated, "We plan to keep the students engaged in achieving their goals
long after the weekend is over. We want them to continue to utilize the
information they gain from the program and keep their projects moving
forward."
Ciara
Edwards, a Northern Vance High School student, said "We have a lot of
challenges to balance with our projects, but we have people here to support us.
That feels great."
Two
hundred and sixty exceptional high school students from across the state were
nominated by a school or community leaders for the N2L program, which is
sponsored and facilitated by UNCW.
Visit
the Web site at http://www.uncw.edu/admissions/need2lead_000.html
Public
Agenda and the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality has released
research that points to two specific areas where teacher training may be
lacking, according to rookie teachers in the trenches and fresh from training:
preparedness for the diversity of the contemporary American classroom and
teaching students with special needs.
Seventy-six
percent of new teachers said that teaching an ethnically diverse student body
was covered in their training. But only 39 percent say that their training in
this area helps them a lot now that they are in the classroom, which puts their
evaluation of the effectiveness of this aspect of their training near the
bottom of the list of subjects the new teachers had studied. The survey covered
12 areas of teacher training ranging from direct instruction to their study of
history, philosophy and policy debates in public education. No other factor
examined in the Public Agenda research showed nearly as great a gap between how
many received training in a given area and new teachers' assessments of the
effectiveness of said training.
This
final report of the "Lessons Learned" series, "Teaching in
Changing Times" focuses on the strengths and possible deficits of the
training new teachers say they receive. The new report and complete
questionnaire are available to media prior to release at: http://www.publicagenda.org/LessonsLearned3
.
The
first report in the "Lessons Learned" series (http://www.publicagenda.org/LessonsLearned1) described the
differences between the views and experiences of new secondary and elementary
teachers. The second looked at the views of teachers coming into the field from
three prominent alternate route programs (http://www.publicagenda.org/LessonsLearned2).
Many
new teachers also reported inadequacies in the training they received for
teaching children with special needs. Most new teachers (82 percent) say their
training in had covered this aspect of teaching, but only 47 percent say their
training helps a lot. This is a particularly important area for training, the
report notes, because nearly every new teacher reported having at least some
children with special needs in their classroom - only 5 percent reported having
no students with special needs.
The
entire "Lessons Learned: New Teachers Talk About Their Jobs, Challenges
and Long-Term Plans" series is online at: http://www.publicagenda.org/LessonsLearned
.
Suburban Surprise
The
anxiety about dealing with diverse classrooms - the sense of being unprepared
and untrained in this area - is greater among new teachers in more upscale
communities. Most new teachers working in both high-needs and in wealthier
schools say they were taught how to teach in an ethnically diverse student
body, but new teachers who work in high-needs schools are significantly more
likely to say that their training does, in fact, help them, with nearly half
(47 percent) saying that their training helps them a lot. By contrast, less
than a third (32 percent) of the new teachers in more affluent schools find
their training in this area helpful.
Training is Otherwise "Comprehensive and Useful"
Experts
and school critics have sometimes attacked teacher-training programs for being
out of touch with reality, but many first-year teachers do not agree. They
report that their training covered a wide number of topics from teaching
specific subject areas to knowing how to manage a classroom and maintain discipline.
Ninety-two
percent say their training included coursework on children's cognitive,
emotional and psychological development and roughly half (49 percent) find it
to be helpful in the classroom. When it comes to direct instruction, of the 84
percent who learned the technique in training, 68 percent say it helps them a
lot now. And on classroom management and discipline, large majorities (78
percent) said their training addressed the subject, with 58 percent reporting
that their training was helpful.
Everyone Wants Smaller Classes
The
challenge of diverse classrooms is also reflected in the judgments new teachers
make about what would really help them improve teaching and student learning.
The researchers presented new teachers with a list of 14 proposals to improve
teacher quality. Two items topped the list and were significantly ahead of all
the others. Seventy-six percent of new teachers say reducing class size would
be very effective at improving teacher quality, and 63 percent say the same
about preparing teachers to meet the needs of a diverse classroom.
The
first edition of the "Lessons Learned" series ("They're Not
Little Kids Anymore: The Special Challenges of New Teachers in High Schools and
Middle Schools") reported that, for strong majorities of the new teachers
regardless of their grade level, the same two items topped their list of
recommendations for improving the profession overall. In the second edition of
the series, focusing on the experiences of teachers who come to teaching through
alternate routes rather than traditional university teacher training programs
("Working Without a Net"), both new alt-route teachers and new
traditionally-trained teachers placed smaller class size at the very top of
their reform wish list, and there was substantial interest in beefing up
preparation to teach in ethnically diverse schools and classrooms.
Students
in public schools learn as much or more math between kindergarten and fifth
grade as similar students in private schools, according to a new University of
Illinois study of multi-year, longitudinal data on nearly 10,000 students.
The
results of the study appear in the May issue of the influential education
journal Phi Delta Kappan.
ÒThese
data provide strong, longitudinal evidence that public schools are at least as
effective as private schools in boosting student achievement,Ó according to the
authors, education professor Christopher Lubienski, doctoral student Corinna
Crane and education professor Sarah Theule Lubienski.
The
new study is the first published study to show that public schools are at least
as effective as private schools at promoting student learning over time, they
say.
Combined
with other, yet-unpublished studies of the same data, which produced similar
findings, Òwe think this effectively ends the debate about whether private
schools are more effective than publics,Ó said Christopher Lubienski, whose
research has dealt with all aspects of alternative education.
This
is important, he said, because many current reforms, such as No Child Left
Behind, charter schools and vouchers for private schools, are based on that
assumption.
After
controlling for demographic differences among students and schools, the
researchersÕ found that public school students began kindergarten with math
scores roughly equal to those of their Catholic school peers. By fifth grade,
however, they had made significantly greater gains, equal to almost an extra
half year of schooling.
Part
of the explanation, Sarah Lubienski said, might lie in the fact that Catholic
schools have fewer certified teachers and employ fewer reform-oriented
mathematics teaching practices Ð something they found in research for another
study, accepted for publication in the American Journal of Education.
Public
school students also Òrivaled the performance of students in other
(non-Catholic) private schools,Ó the researchers wrote. After adjusting for
demographics and initial kindergarten scores, they found that achievement gains
between kindergarten and fifth grade were roughly equal.
Put
another way by Sarah Lubienski, Òschool type alone doesnÕt explain very much of
why these scores vary É in truth, whether the school is public or private
doesnÕt seem to make that much difference.Ó
The
researchers go on to write that they Òpersonally see private schools as an
integral part of the American system of educationÓ and Òthere are many valid
reasons why parents choose private schools and why policymakers may push for
school choice.Ó
Academic
achievement, however, may no longer be one of those reasons, they write.
ÒClaims that simply switching students from one type of school to another will
result in higher scores appear to be unfounded.Ó
They
suggest Òmoving away from a simple focus on school type and instead examining
what happens within schools.Ó
Twenty-six
percent of secondary-level science and math students in public schools were
taught by teachers who did not have "in-field" majors or state
certification in the 2003-04 school year, according to a new Child Trends
study, Qualifications of Public School Teachers for Science, Mathematics, And
History. Students in higher poverty schools and students with less experienced
teachers were more likely to be taught by "out-of-field" teachers.
Among
secondary-level science and math students in the 2003-04 school year:
- 58 percent had a teacher with a postsecondary major in the specific science
or math field that they were teaching.
- 61 percent had a teacher with an in-field regular state certification.
- 45 percent had a teacher with both qualifications.
- 26 percent had a teacher with neither qualification.
Students
of both math and science in lower poverty schools (where fewer than 50 percent
of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) were more likely to
be taught by teachers with in-field qualifications than were students in higher
poverty schools (where 50 percent or more of students were eligible for free or
reduced-price lunch).
- 64 percent of students in lower poverty schools had teachers with an in-field
state certification, compared to 53 percent of students in higher poverty
schools.
- 23 percent of students in lower poverty schools had a teacher with no
in-field certification or major, as opposed to 35 percent of students in higher
poverty schools.
Students
of veteran teachers (with 6 or more years of teaching experience) had in-field
certified teachers more often than students of newer teachers (with 5 or fewer
years of experience).
- 67 percent of students of veteran teachers had an in-field certified teacher,
compared to 45 percent of students with newer teachers.
- 11 percent of students with veteran teachers were taught by teachers without
a regular certification in any subject, compared to 58 percent of students of
newer teachers.
The
study also examines secondary-level history teachers. Among history students in
the 2003-04 school year:
- 62 percent had a teacher with a postsecondary major in the specific science
or math field that they were teaching.
- 79 percent had a teacher with an in-field regular state certification.
- 53 percent had a teacher with both qualifications.
- 12 percent had a teacher with neither qualification.
New
research from the University of New Hampshire shows that students do much
better in school when their parents are actively involved in their education.
Researchers
Karen Smith Conway, professor of economics at the University of New Hampshire,
and her colleague Andrew Houtenville, senior research associate at New Editions
Consulting, found that parental involvement has a strong, positive effect on
student achievement.
The
research is reported in ÒParental Effort, School Resources, and Student
Achievement,Ó which appears in the spring 2008 issue of the Journal of Human
Resources.
ÒParental
effort is consistently associated with higher levels of achievement, and the
magnitude of the effect of parental effort is substantial. We found that
schools would need to increase per-pupil spending by more than $1,000 in order
to achieve the same results that are gained with parental involvement,Ó Conway
said.
Parents
seemed particularly interested in the academic achievements of their daughters.
The researchers found parents spent more time talking to their daughters about
their school work during dinnertime discussions.
ÒThere
are a number of theories about why girls seem to garner more attention from
their parents than boys. One possibility is that girls are more communicative
with their parents so these conversations about academics are easier for
parents to have with their daughters,Ó Conway said.
The
researchers also found that parents may reduce their efforts when school
resources increase, thus diminishing the effects of improved school resources.
ÒAs
an economist, I look for reactions to a specific action so it is not surprising
to me that parents may scale back their involvement with their childÕs
education when a school adds resources. As a result, increasing school
resources may not be as effective as we expect since they may diminish parental
involvement,Ó Conway said.
The
researchers used national data from more than 10,000 eighth-grade students in
public and private schools, their parents, teachers, and school administrators.
The researchers were particularly interested in how frequently parents
discussed activities or events of particular interest to the child, discussed
things the child studied in class, discussed selecting courses or programs at
school, attended a school meeting, and volunteered at the childÕs school.